Southern Skillet Cornbread

To go with my veggie chili, cornbread is requisite. I think chili without cornbread is like peanut butter without jelly. Each is just better with its accompaniment. Since baking is not really my forte (I'm a rebel and like to change things up ... you'll see in a minute), I went with a recipe from my old standby cookbook, Better Homes and Gardens 75th anniversary edition. Like my mom's old, tattered, literally falling-apart Betty Crocker cookbook, this cookbook has served me well, and will likely one day be in the same state as hers. 

 

Grandma says: In the skillet is always better.

I started by gathering all the ingredients: sugar, cornmeal, flour, milk, baking powder, eggs, creamed corn and butter for the skillet.

So, like I said, I have trouble actually following a recipe. Both the creamed corn and coconut milk (in that random plastic container) were substitutions. Instead of oil, I used the corn. Normally I would've used applesauce or Greek yogurt, but it so happened I had some creamed corn already open. It worked out quite nicely, being that, you know, I was making cornbread. Instead of regular ol' milk, I used the coconut milk, simply because I had already opened the can and needed to use it up.

So first I combined all the dry ingredients.

And then added wet to dry.

 

Next I melted about a tablespoon of butter in the cooking vessel, my cast iron skillet inherited from my Texan grandmother. Since the last time I made cornbread, I inherited three skillets from Grandma, and the size I used this time was more appropriate for one recipe of cornbread.

I'm sure there's a way to photograph this well, but I sure don't know it.

I then dumped all the mixture into the skillet and into the oven it went.

Then out came this glorious, chewy cornbread.

Mmm Mmm!

Cornbread

from Better Homes and Gardens 7th anniversary edition

1 cup flour

3/4 cup cornmeal

2 Tbls sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1 Tbls butter

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk (I used lowfat coconut milk)

1/4 cup oil or melted butter (I used creamed corn)

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Add the 1 Tbls butter to cast iron skillet. Place in 400* oven about 3 minutes or until butter melts. Remove pan from oven; swirl butter in pan to coat bottom and sides of pan.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine eggs, milk and oil. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Pour batter into hot skillet. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.

(Almost) Veggie Chili

As the days have been cooling off, the kitchen's been heating up. When it's drizzly and icky outside, comfort food comes to the rescue. So, recently I made some chili. With the exception of some bacon grease, it's completely vegetarian. 

Here we go. Start by sauteeing two strips of bacon. They'll be consumed by Cookie Monster later.

After it's crisp, drain all but about a tablespoon of the grease. Chop a carrot into bite-sized pieces ...

... Then add to the pan, along with chopped onion. (You could use whatever kind of onion you have. I happened to have a red one that needed to be used up.)

Once the carrot/onion mixture has softened, add chopped green bell pepper.

And saute for about five minutes, 'til the pepper is softened. Meanwhile, get your canned goods together. 

 

I used cannellini beans, kidney beans, tomato sauce and crushed tomatoes. When vegetables are done, add them, plus all above canned goods, to your Crockpot. I also added some frozen corn but forgot to get its closeup.

Oh yeah. Add in two of these guys for spice and smokiness.

Next, toss in your spices. You'll obviously need chili powder, as well as cumin, black pepper, spicy paprika and salt.

As well as some cilantro.

Also, I added some Worcestershire, but forgot to set it out with the rest of the ingredients. Stir the chili mixture well, then Set it and Forget it in your Crockpot on high, until the whole house smells like chili. Mine went for about five hours. I came back periodically to stir and adjust seasonings as necessary.

Garnish with sour cream (or in this case, nonfat Greek yogurt) and more fresh cilantro, and then take a shitty photo. 

Voila! You have made chili!

Stay tuned for my cornbread recipe. Chili without cornbread is like peanut butter without chocolate: totally fine, but missing that je ne sais quoi it could have.

How to Make Bread Hockey Pucks

To go with my tzatziki, I thought I'd make bread hockey pucks. It's the newest thing in bread, you know. Those sandwich thins ain't got nothin' on these. I've had better success making homemade bread in recent times, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

 

Start by gathering all your ingredients.

Then add the warm water to the yeast. When it looks all foggy like this, you know it's woken up and is doing its thing.

Next, combine the flour, sugar, oil and yeast mixture. Be sure to use part whole wheat flour, even though the recipe does not call for it, since you know it will be fine and won't affect the texture at all. Also, use idiot's logic that having a baked good in the house that's all white flour is probably a directive from Satan himself.

Since you know that salt is a natural retardant for yeast, plan to add it after you dump the yeast/water mixture into the flour. Then forget to add the salt at all.

Stir until it all comes together, until it forms a misshapen (if I was going for a foodie description, I might call it "craggy") ball.

Then commence with the kneading. Usually, a fancy-pants Kitchenaid will do this for you with the dough hook, but if you're feeling especially ambitious as I was, hand knead your dough. It will take a lot of time, but if you're listening to music and working out your frustrations on the dough, it can be quite cathartic. Knead until it's smooth and no longer sticky. I went about 15 minutes, I would guess. 

Then cut the dough into halves and then into eight equal-ish pieces. Use this moment, while you're lovingly admiring your cute little dough balls, to realize that you forgot to add salt, noting the bread will now likely taste like newspaper paste. Curse silently. Or aloud, like someone* did.

Roll into balls. Place on a baking sheet, cover with a towel and let them rise.

They should double in size. Smile to yourself, thinking that, despite the salt mishap, you have succeeded with yeast again, bringing the total number of times to a grand total of three.

Press them down into discs (or "hockey pucks") and coat with olive oil. Add salt in an abysmal last-ditch effort to impart some flavor.

Bake until golden brown on top. They should puff up in the middle, creating a pocket. These will not. Instead, they'll stay flat and cracked on the top, and each weigh in at approximately three pounds. This is likely due to the errant whole wheat flour that some idiot knew wouldn't affect the texture at all.

Sigh. Note that your success with yeast has regressed back to two times.

But wait! Note the silver lining that your husband, bless his heart, will spread copious amounts of jam on these cute little hockey pucks as a snack, thus making them edible. He's quite the guy, that Cookie Monster.

And that, my friends, is how to make your own hockey pucks at home.

Captain Obvious says: These were supposed to be pita bread. The author just royally fucked them up.

*It was me. I cursed audibly. If you know me, this will not be a surprise.

Say What? Tzatziki

Here we have a recipe for tzatziki, a Mediterranean cucumber-yogurt sauce. I recently was given an entire bunch of fresh dill, which I love, but is a strong flavor, so a little goes a long way. I've made gouda dill scones and roasted potatoes with dill, but I wanted a way to use up some more. Enter: this flavorful (low cal!) dip/sauce.

Here we have our ingredients:

Cucumber

Greek yogurt (I used nonfat)

Garlic

Lemon juice

Fresh dill

Diced red onion

Scallion

S&P

Simply chop the cucumber into small pieces (you can also grate it on a box grater, but this makes the dip a little soupier), chop the garlic with a little salt until it makes a paste, and then add the rest of the ingredients. It's good just as it is, but after it sits in the fridge for a few hours, it's even better. 

I like to make Greek salads with olives, pepperoncini  and feta, and use this as a sort of dressing. It's also good with chips, or spooned into pita with vegetables and chickpeas.

Back in the Saddle

Howdy, folks. Here I am again, back to blog another day.

So, here's the deal: I read a lot of food blogs. Some of them are great, some not so great, but the point is that I read them every day. I find myself wondering about these random people, whom I've never met, thinking about their daily lives. Ain't the Internet grand?

Damn. I just realized I have no photo above the fold for your viewing enjoyment. Welp, Internet to the rescue!

Why yes, I am the most adorable thing you've ever seen!
(Source)

 

 

 

 

Several of these food bloggers have enough readers and earn enough money that blogging is their full-time job. What with the current suckage factor of my blog, I'm not expecting any miracles, nor do I think I would want to have blogging as my full-time job. I'm a pretty private person (hence the anonymity here), and I wonder sometimes how these bloggers are able to just put all those details of their lives out there for everyone to see. Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid, but there are a lot of creepers out there, far smarter than I am about how to do creepy things, so I like to keep as much as my life off the 'Net as possible.

But hey, if I want to at least run behind this bandwagon, frantically waving for them to wait up, then I gotta at least show up, right?

So, in that vein, I took pictures of food today. For now, I have something simple. But I have chili in the Crockpot right now, and some tzatziki chilling in the fridge, so I've got some more on the way.

And now may I present to you: My lunch. Da da da daaah! (In case you couldn't tell, those were trumpets.)

Here we have a salad with:

red leaf and romaine lettuce

tomato

cucumber

carrot

baked cubed tofu from Trader Joe's 

crumbled turkey bacon

Dressed with a little drizzle of low-fat ranch

And to accompany said salad, a sandwich with:

turkey

yellow squash

cucumber

tomato 

turkey bacon 

on a honey wheat sandwich thin. 

One side is spread with cream cheese, the other with roasted red pepper hummus.

 

 

And here it is in its entirety:

I actually didn't end up finishing the salad; it was a little too much.

So here we are. Let's see where we can go from here.

My Lunch for the Past Three Months

Ok, so I'm not normally a person to go on a certain foods kick. I like variety. It's the spice of life, you know. I'll think about what I have in the fridge and concoct a meal from there. Usually it involves what's been sitting for a while and needs to be used up.

But lately, this summer, I've been eating these wraps for lunch, nearly every day. Something about the sweet, crunchy carrots and the soft tortilla emit a siren song that I can't ignore.

This wrap is similar to this one but without the cabbage and other fancy vegetables. Today, my wrap had julienned carrots (they must be cut in this shape so there's a little sweet, crunchy carrot in each bite. Carrot coins would be right out!), julienned cucumbers, pickled jalapenos, black olives, turkey bacon, roasted red pepper hummus and red pepper strips. The fillings vary from day to day, depending on the produce we have, as well as the wrap (most of the time it's a whole wheat tortilla) but it's been pretty much this wrap for the past three months. I think it's because the crunchy vegetables are cold, the wrap is soft and the hummus is creamy—also, the temperature this summer averaged approximately 500 degrees each day, and this involves no cooking.

On the side, I finished off this bag of chips, which was really just a bunch of chip dust at the end of the bag.

And three meatless meatballs for protein. I considered stuffing them into the wrap, but then I wouldn't have been able to dip them in my two different condiments: dijon mustard and ketchup mixed, and BBQ sauce and ranch mixed. (Side note: I love condiments. There are approximately seventy two different condiments in my refrigerator door at this precise moment.)

It's a quick and easy lunch to throw together using whatever you have in the produce drawer. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Sabra Vegetable Dip

I really like Sabra's hummus. I've had a lot of hummus, and this one's the best. It's creamy, not chunky, and that's the way hummus should be. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are runners-up, but Sabra is the best.


 (source)

Foodbuzz sent me a coupon to try any Sabra product for free. But seeing as I already had two varieties of hummus in my fridge, I went with something new: a Greek-yogurt vegetable dip. Genius! More than I care to admit, I really love those oil and chemical-laden creamy dips that are terrible for you. But these dips are made with Greek yogurt as the base, not mayonnaise, so they're pretty low in fat and calories. I tried the onion and herb flavor, and it was just like those French onion dips in the jar, but better for you. It was really good. So good, in fact, that the entire container was consumed in a matter of days and I forgot to take a picture of it.

So this was definitely a win. And the fact that it was free, well, that makes it a double win.